The huge cache of military files provides a devastating portrait of a failing war and reveals how coalition forces have killed hundreds of innocent civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders now fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in U.S. military history. The files, which were made available to the UK Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, provide a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 U.S. troops.

The war logs detail how:

• a secret “black” unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial.
• the US covered up evidence that the Taliban has acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.
• the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
• the Taliban has caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of its roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

The Obama White House criticized the publication of the files by Wikileaks saying:

“We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact the U.S. government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who co-operate with us.”

Nonetheless, lethal errors at civilians’ expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A U.S. patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.

Questionable shootings of civilians by UK troops also figure. The U.S. compilers detail an unusual cluster of four British shootings in Kabul in the space of barely a month, in October/November 2007, culminating in the death of the son of an Afghan general.

At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total, but this is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.

The leaked files certainly stand in stark contrast to the manufactured propaganda the American people are being fed by the Obama administration as it continues to follow a war model in Afghanistan started by the Bush administration nine years ago.

You can read the Afghanistan war documents on WikiLeaks HERE. Please be advised the site is extremely overloaded and running slow. Be patient and keep trying if the site times out.

You don’t have to convince me that we should have never gone in there, and that we should get the hell out of there right now. This war served no purpose as far as protecting this country and was a grand waste of our nation’s capital.

The British got their butts kicked in Afghanistan back in 1890. It led to a turnover in the government. In 1979, the former USSR mounted a 10 year war against the Afghan government and they were defeated by sling shots and rocks. Now, the mighty (but stupid) US thinks it can accomplish what neither the Brits or the Russians could do. We’re fools and we never, ever learn.

I hoped Obama would be wiser but he is turning out to be Bush 2.0 and I am woefully sad that he can’t or won’t stand up to the neocons in the Congress and in the Pentagon. I am no longer confident the president will do as promised and remove the US combat troops from Afghanistan by next summer.

Why does this country never learn…. ANYTHING??? Here I am, 65 years old, I Protested Vietnam way back as early as 1964 & 65 when I was still in college. Now 45 years later, I’ve been proven right again! We never should have Invaded Iraq, we never should have gone into Afghanistan. We continue to fight the wrong wars…. wasting the youth of our country, for NOTHING and wasting vast amounts of money desparately need for other things. YES, WE’RE STUPID! And Yes, WE ELECT STUPID POLITICIANS. I was born at the ‘Crest of the Empire’… 1944, unfortunately, it’s been downhill ever since! Glad I won’t be around when they’re teaching Chinese in all of our schools, very soon.

Everytime I see Karzai on the news when he visits Washington DC and he’s accorded the pomp and circumstance of a real foreign leader mu blood pressure climbs and I want to shoot the TV screen with my rifle.

Karzai and his brother are bit-bit, petty dictators who are lining their pockets with American tax dollars and buying luxury real estate in the South of France to hang out bimbos and strippers imported from Saudi harems.

America’s occupation of Afghanistan will never be a success because the purpose of our “mission” was never clear from the start. Osama bin Laden isn’t in Afghanistan — he’s in Pakistan and there is no reason for our troops to be there because their presence is only fostering greater radicalism.

If Obama doesn’t wake up and soon, he’s going to find himself out of a job in 2 1/2 years. Americans have had enough of war and debt and lies. From my perspective, the clock is ticking and he had better decide if he’d rather be wrong and a one termer of correct and a two termer.

Call me braindead but I have no idea why we have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan? This is a small nation with no military. How exactly is Afghanistan a threat? Why are we there? Please don’t say it is due to 9/11 because I will laugh in your face. 9/11 was nearly 10 years ago and the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and trained in Florida! Evidently, Mr. Obama is drinking the same koolaid Bush drank.

President Obama will be The View Wednesday. I wonder if anyone will dare to question the war or other salient issues like why Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell still hasn’t been repealed despite the fact he’s been in office nearly two years? My money is on Joy Behar. She’s the only one there with a brain.

“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.”

Thanks for posting this. I just turned on CNN and they’re covering a baby in a watermelon. Talk about fail.

Now that the American people and the world know what a God damned failure the Afghanistan war is, and how we’re getting our asses kicked over there, maybe now the Congress and President Obama will be forced to get the troops out of there.

Another disappointment from Obama. I’m voting Green next election. The connection between Obama and oil is just too strong. Now that they’ve discovered three trillion dollars worth of minerals, we’ll never leave Afghanistan.

The US charges into the darkness, convinced Islamic nations want and American-style democracy, when in fact, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Somalia are perfectly happy as they are living in Muslim dominated theocracy.

Sometimes it is better to stay home, smile and leave other nations alone.

Lost in the blogosphere kerfuffle about the 90,000 documents dumped is Hillary Clinton just last week saying the USA is poised to give the Paks $1 billion in new foreign aid.

Why? The Paks are helping to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Where is the accountability on this? The outrage? Why is Obama getting bitch slapped but our brilliant Secretary of State gets a pass?

Fuck Obama and fuck Hillary. They’re two sides of the same coin. If the left thinks one is more committed to peach than the other, then the left needs to grow up.

I like the quote from WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange:

“This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war. The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence.”

I don’t have the time to read 92,000 documents contradicting the neocons on the Afghanistan war. It was wrong from the beginning and there’s no way to spin it into anything good. All I know is this. I voted for Mr. Obama because he said certain things would happen under his leadership. Things like repealing DADT and DOMA and bringing the troops home. So far, none of this has happened. I don’t have to vote in 2012. Trust me, if Mr. Obama doesn’t start to deliver on the issues I care deeply about, I can stay home in 2012.

The pushback by the cafe crown over at Democratic Underground says Afghanistan is “Bush’s war” and that “Obama merely inherited it.”

Well, no, Afghanistan is very much Obama’s war and as president, he has every opportunity to turn the page and begin a new direction. But he’s clearly in awe of the Pentagon and intimidated by the military as Gen. Stan McChrystal said in the Rolling Stone interview.

But what we can’t forget is, a war crime is a war is a war crime, regardless of whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican, or a man or woman, or black or white and the Wikileaks papers strongly suggest the US military is engaged in war crimes against the Afghan people — including children.

As far as this story is concerned, to me it’s a repeat of the ”Pentagon Papers” story of the 1970’s. Danial Ellsberg Must be Laughing his Ass off. This proves, as it did during the Vietnam War, That our Government is run by a bunch or rotten LIARS!!! It doesn’t matter who’s in power… They’re all LIARS!

Our foreign policy which informs our military policy will ultimately lead to our demise. I have said for many years that our greatest era is now behind us and what’s left is just a shell of what we once stood for as a nation.

History shows few nations of greatness last longer than 20 centuries before they begin their decline. We are no different.

I remember when former Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) said Pakistan’s ISI was funding and training Taliban fighters along the border effectively undermining the stability of Afghanistan and the US’s efforts in the region.

Maybe policymakers should start listening to now Vice President Joe Biden? He may be smarter than anyone thought.

I hope the leak of documents becomes the needed pressure on this administration to redeploy the troops out of Afghanistan once and for all. But politicians are arrogant and this includes Obama. The leak of these documents could make him dig his heels in deeper. I hope this isn’t the case but only time will tell.

Obama bin Laden isn’t in Afghanistan. He’s in the tribal lands of NW Pakistan.
Let me repeat.
Obama bin Laden isn’t in Afghanistan. He’s in the tribal lands of NW Pakistan.
Wouldn’t it be more practical and less lethal for the troops if we offered a billion in greenbacks to the local warlords to turn him over?
I know this wouldn’t be as sexy and there would be no photo ops for TIME, Newsweek and the New York Times, but I honestly believe the majority of the American public would be far happier with this as a solution than another decade of war.
Thoughts?

I agree with Glorious Blasphemer. These documents may turn out to be this generation’s Pentagon Papers. If I was President Obama I would be worried. He has no choice but to try and defend the undefendable to a skeptical and weary American public. This war must draw to a close. The country can’t survive another decade of this nonsense.

Well screw this classified document crapola. They just finagled another $33 billion for war- as an add on (same like Bush), although Obama promised he would not do that- that war budgets would be up front on the budget. He also said he would exhaust diplomatic avenues first.
More war, more billions, more secret atrocities.

Chimpy’s Epic Failure is nor Obama’s Boondoggle. We had a chance to do it right, but the moronic monkey was more interested in showing up his father than he ever was in getting the job done the right way. It’s too late now. Time to leave.

Make no mistake about: Afghanistan is Obama’s war now. He owns it, lock, stock and barrel.

Obama has his surge, a new military general and even his own war appropriation funding which adds to the national debt. The crimes against civilians belong to Obama, as do the violations of the Geneva convention.

Perhaps, because Obama is a man of academia and not the military that he seems so swayed by the power of the uniform. These men are everything the president will never be. It is this fact alone which causes me the most worry.

Jolly Roger…. it’s time to stop blaming Chimpy for Afghanistan, this is the ‘House Ni&&er’s’ war now! He promised during his campaign to end it. He hasn’t. This exposure of this century’s ‘Pentagon Papers’ is a good thing, maybe the best thing for a war-weary Country. Our young Soldiers and our Fortune are going down the drain….. with no benefits yet observed! We’re repeating all the mistakes of the ‘FORMER’, get that, FORMER Soviet Union. We are a Nation in decline, throwing away our most preci0us resources and getting nothing of their value back. HEY OBAMA, you’re BUSH’s BLACK SON, and like him you’re a failure! This is why……. we should never elect anyone who has never tasted GRIEF of War. They don’t know the futility…. all they’re looking for is the Glory. THERE IS NONE! There is only death and destruction. OBAMA…. I’M DISGUSTED WITH YOU!!

I watched Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) on MSNBC this morning and he said what he’s hearing from constituents is a simple theme: why are we still in Afghanistan?

So, President Obama, why are we still in Afghanistan?
So, President Obama, why are we spending $7 billion a month there?
So, President Obama, why do we have 90,000 troops on the ground there?
And lastly President Obama, why are going to give billions to Pakistan when they assist the Taliban to kill our men and women?

Obama’s been president for nineteen months and at some point, he needs to stop accepting awards and going on vacation and lead the nation. As long as he has people around him enabling him by blaming his predecessor for everything, Obama won’t grow into the job.

No one is born “the President.” They become the president through decisions and leading.

Conservatives whine about government spending is sending America into poverty.

Occupying Iraq and Afghanistan is bankrupting our nation. A trillion dollars so far and growing.

The Bush revisionists and the Obama apologists be damned because they don’t matter now. What matters is the simple fact that the US Treasury is empty and we’re borrowing money hand-over-fist from China to maintain our macho posture in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the Taliban Afghans have surface-to-air missiles capable of shooting down American aircraft then, we should be asking where they got them from? If the answer is Iran, then the Afghanistan war isn’t about the Taliban or even nation building. It’s about the US fighting a proxy against Iran on Afghan soil.

The American people were lied to — not only by former President Bush but, by President Obama and the entire Congress who keeps voting to fund this proxy war.

Visitor Count

2,010,108 Visitors

My Liberal Identity:

You are a New Left Hipster, also known as a MoveOn.org liberal, a Netroots activist, or a Daily Show fanatic. You believe that if we really want to defend American values, conservatives must be exposed, mocked, and assailed for every fanatical, puritanical, warmongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which they stand.